6 ms·

This is shameful, and the second time this month NYT puts out such a shameful piece (the first time was the JetBrains/ Solarwinds article). I guess this should

by NhanH 6y ago

This is shameful, and the second time this month NYT puts out such a shameful piece (the first time was the JetBrains/ Solarwinds article). I guess this should be enough to disregard everything NYT will write, and stop reading them. Another commenter said that NYT still produces comparably some of the best journalistic content. I will have to stop reading news if this is the case. After the whole fiasco of Scott deleting the blog, and this is still the piece they decided to go with. It's a bit hard to trust the NYT's integrity..

grapehut 6y ago
Third time if you include the bizarre Ayaan Hirsi Ali hit piece too. I guess it's a product of actual-journalism not paying the bills.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  No, it's a product of the ideological drivel the NYT chose to embrace, identity politics. Not all news outlets are like that. It became obvious with the literal journalist purge going on there. You can't be a moderate and work there anymore, you have to subscribe to a certain thought framework, if you question it, you're deemed "offensive" and you're out.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sfblah 6y ago
  What about spiking the Bret Stephens piece about the controversy over the science reporter who was fired? That was this month as well.
colinmhayes 6y ago
The times is very pessimistic on tech, largely I believe because they're upset about being run over by google/facebook. It's definitely unfortunate, but the future of journalism is really not bright at all. No one is willing to pay for unbiased news, so you need to find a niche to attract people or churn out clickbait. The times has found their niche as technocrat skeptics.
- biztos 6y ago
  > No one is willing to pay for unbiased news I think a lot of people are willing to pay for mostly-unbiased business news. WSJ, FT, Economist, Nikkei et al seem to be doing alright. But that leaves a lot of the world unreported by serious news organizations. I’d love to see a better answer to that than “support flawed organizations that do some good reporting.” But so far I don’t.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Nikkei = FT. The FT has... interesting politics, and seems far more progressive than anyone would expect, although considering the cost of a subscription it's also a fairly exclusive crowd. WSJ and Economist are hardly unbiased. (IMO The Economist is essentially a straightforward neoliberal pro-Gilded Age propaganda outlet, and always has been.) The NYT has always been 'dodgy' as we say in the UK. I remember finding their op-eds clownishly stupid when I first started encountered them back in the 00s, and they don't seem to have improved since then. But there's been a shift to woke since then. And the problem with woke is that so often it operates on the level of personal witch hunts and straightforward public bullying - which makes it depressingly close to its equivalent on the far right, but without the insane weapon fetish. You can argue that sometimes this is justified. And sometimes - as with Weinstein, etc - it is. But it's harder to support it when it becomes an exercise in tokenism and tribal identity. It's interesting how often woke goes after individuals deemed guilty of alleged bad-think and how rarely it goes after egregious corporate behaviour. Or even how rarely it mobilises to destroy the careers of politicians who act in unconscionable ways.
    - biztos 6y ago
      Ah, right, I forgot about the FT/Nikkei connection. I subscribe to the latter and not the former. Economist is very opinionated, sure, but when I do read them I find the reporting on world business issues pretty informative and the tone a good test of how I feel about globalization that week. At least I know who's talking to me... well not literally "who" of course.
- dohnuts1919 6y ago
nxc18 6y ago
I recently dropped my NYT sub; jetbrains nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back. I know it's a meme to bring up Gell-mann amnesia here, but I will raise it as a basic test for quality in journalism. When NYT writes about something I know about, I almost always have serious problems with it. Jetbrains in particular. And honestly some of the writing is so bad that even without knowing about the subject, I can tell it is crap, like the article about the SlateStarCodex. I had never read it before that post, but had heard it mentioned in passing. Also, NYT Opinion is Hannity/Shapiro level crap and should be dumped. Stick to the facts please. On the other hand, The Economist has consistently impressed me; I read/listen with a critical ear and they do a wonderful job even with very niche topics. I've worked on some AR tech and they had a special report that just really nailed it and got into the weeds. Every time I thought "but they didn't mention..." they would mention or clarify a paragraph later. Economist has a liberal viewpoint and they're not shy about it. I prefer that approach and accept that I disagree with the conclusions/advice from time to time, but the facts are right and error corrections are almost always very minor in nature. There is good journalism out there, just maybe not from NYT. Please don't give up hope.
- lasagnaphil 6y ago
  Yeah, the Jetbrains article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-...) was just too over-the-top conspiracy fluff. It’s sad to see some liberals critiquing QAnon and then immediately eating any kind of Russian conspiracy shit without any doubt.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    It's not really. SolarWind uses a JetBrains component as a critical piece of infrastructure in the government which may have basically been built by Russia. Now maybe everything is above board but JetBrains does employ developers in Russia and was originally a Russian company. We don't run Kaspersky in the government either. More to the point this should never have happened.
    - 6y ago
sgtnoodle 6y ago
I don't trust any mainstream news other than local because it all seems like either propaganda or theater. In my opinion, NYT and The Washington Post are the two most despicable out there.
mnky9800n 6y ago
They also outed a Chinese Twitter maker a few years ago. Or maybe that was vice and the reporter now works at nyt. I don't remember except that nyt these days is lame.
- belorn 6y ago
  That was vice, and it involved outed details about the makers family members, her relationship status, and her sexual orientation.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    Yes but at some point the nytimes was also involved I thought.
- Clewza313 6y ago
  That was Naomi "SexyCyborg" Wu, and it was Vice, not the NYT: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3100274/ups-and-downs-naomi-sexycyborg-wu-chinese-tech-loving https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3100274...

by NhanH 6y ago

grapehut 6y ago

Third time if you include the bizarre Ayaan Hirsi Ali hit piece too. I guess it's a product of actual-journalism not paying the bills.

throw_m239339 6y ago
No, it's a product of the ideological drivel the NYT chose to embrace, identity politics. Not all news outlets are like that. It became obvious with the literal journalist purge going on there. You can't be a moderate and work there anymore, you have to subscribe to a certain thought framework, if you question it, you're deemed "offensive" and you're out.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sfblah 6y ago
What about spiking the Bret Stephens piece about the controversy over the science reporter who was fired? That was this month as well.

colinmhayes 6y ago

The times is very pessimistic on tech, largely I believe because they're upset about being run over by google/facebook. It's definitely unfortunate, but the future of journalism is really not bright at all. No one is willing to pay for unbiased news, so you need to find a niche to attract people or churn out clickbait. The times has found their niche as technocrat skeptics.

biztos 6y ago
> No one is willing to pay for unbiased news I think a lot of people are willing to pay for mostly-unbiased business news. WSJ, FT, Economist, Nikkei et al seem to be doing alright. But that leaves a lot of the world unreported by serious news organizations. I’d love to see a better answer to that than “support flawed organizations that do some good reporting.” But so far I don’t.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Nikkei = FT. The FT has... interesting politics, and seems far more progressive than anyone would expect, although considering the cost of a subscription it's also a fairly exclusive crowd. WSJ and Economist are hardly unbiased. (IMO The Economist is essentially a straightforward neoliberal pro-Gilded Age propaganda outlet, and always has been.) The NYT has always been 'dodgy' as we say in the UK. I remember finding their op-eds clownishly stupid when I first started encountered them back in the 00s, and they don't seem to have improved since then. But there's been a shift to woke since then. And the problem with woke is that so often it operates on the level of personal witch hunts and straightforward public bullying - which makes it depressingly close to its equivalent on the far right, but without the insane weapon fetish. You can argue that sometimes this is justified. And sometimes - as with Weinstein, etc - it is. But it's harder to support it when it becomes an exercise in tokenism and tribal identity. It's interesting how often woke goes after individuals deemed guilty of alleged bad-think and how rarely it goes after egregious corporate behaviour. Or even how rarely it mobilises to destroy the careers of politicians who act in unconscionable ways.
  - biztos 6y ago
    Ah, right, I forgot about the FT/Nikkei connection. I subscribe to the latter and not the former. Economist is very opinionated, sure, but when I do read them I find the reporting on world business issues pretty informative and the tone a good test of how I feel about globalization that week. At least I know who's talking to me... well not literally "who" of course.
dohnuts1919 6y ago

nxc18 6y ago

I recently dropped my NYT sub; jetbrains nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back. I know it's a meme to bring up Gell-mann amnesia here, but I will raise it as a basic test for quality in journalism. When NYT writes about something I know about, I almost always have serious problems with it. Jetbrains in particular. And honestly some of the writing is so bad that even without knowing about the subject, I can tell it is crap, like the article about the SlateStarCodex. I had never read it before that post, but had heard it mentioned in passing. Also, NYT Opinion is Hannity/Shapiro level crap and should be dumped. Stick to the facts please. On the other hand, The Economist has consistently impressed me; I read/listen with a critical ear and they do a wonderful job even with very niche topics. I've worked on some AR tech and they had a special report that just really nailed it and got into the weeds. Every time I thought "but they didn't mention..." they would mention or clarify a paragraph later. Economist has a liberal viewpoint and they're not shy about it. I prefer that approach and accept that I disagree with the conclusions/advice from time to time, but the facts are right and error corrections are almost always very minor in nature. There is good journalism out there, just maybe not from NYT. Please don't give up hope.

lasagnaphil 6y ago
Yeah, the Jetbrains article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-hack.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-...) was just too over-the-top conspiracy fluff. It’s sad to see some liberals critiquing QAnon and then immediately eating any kind of Russian conspiracy shit without any doubt.
- sjg007 6y ago
  It's not really. SolarWind uses a JetBrains component as a critical piece of infrastructure in the government which may have basically been built by Russia. Now maybe everything is above board but JetBrains does employ developers in Russia and was originally a Russian company. We don't run Kaspersky in the government either. More to the point this should never have happened.
  - 6y ago

sgtnoodle 6y ago

I don't trust any mainstream news other than local because it all seems like either propaganda or theater. In my opinion, NYT and The Washington Post are the two most despicable out there.

mnky9800n 6y ago

They also outed a Chinese Twitter maker a few years ago. Or maybe that was vice and the reporter now works at nyt. I don't remember except that nyt these days is lame.

belorn 6y ago
That was vice, and it involved outed details about the makers family members, her relationship status, and her sexual orientation.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  Yes but at some point the nytimes was also involved I thought.
Clewza313 6y ago
That was Naomi "SexyCyborg" Wu, and it was Vice, not the NYT: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3100274/ups-and-downs-naomi-sexycyborg-wu-chinese-tech-loving https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3100274...